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Prof Veena Sahajwalla
Harnessing the Potential of Recycled Materials - A smart vision for a sustainable future
Veena will share her vision for a sustainable future, highlighting the importance of creating a circular economy and how using waste as a resource must be at the centre of our manufacturing future and innovative decarbonisation efforts, in collaboration between researchers and industry. She will highlight that using innovations such as UNSW SMaRT Centre's recycling and MICROfactorieTM technologies that recover valuable materials from waste and reform them into new manufacturing feedstock and products through collaborators, are central to help achieve the sustainability needed for the future.
About Veena:
Professor Veena Sahajwalla is an internationally recognised materials scientist, engineer, and inventor revolutionising recycling science. She is renowned for pioneering the high temperature transformation of waste in the production of a new generation of ‘green materials’ at the UNSW Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) Centre, where she is Founding Director. Professor Veena is the inventor of polymer injection technology, known as green steel, an eco-friendly process for using recycled tyres in steel production. In 2018, Veena launched the world's first e-waste MICROfactorieTM and in 2019 she launched her plastics and Green Ceramics MICROfactoriesTM, a recycling technology breakthrough. Professor Veena is the director of the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for ‘microrecycling’, a leading national research centre that works in collaboration with industry to ensure new recycling science is translated into real world environmental and economic benefits. Professor Veena has also been appointed hub leader of the national NESP Sustainable Communities and Waste Hub. In 2021, Professor Veena featured in the ABC’s Australian Story and she was named the 2022 NSW Australian of the Year in recognition of her work. Professor Veena was named the 2022 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes winner for the Celestino Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science and was also awarded the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) Clunies Ross Innovation Award. In 2023, Professor Veena was awarded the Engineering Australia Chemical College Chemical Engineer Achievement Award and the Good Design 2023 Women in Design Award.